Trump won these independent voters. Now some are souring on his second term.
Well, some are waking up to the fact that the convicted felon criminal traitor duped them. It's about fucking time.
Independent voter Lisa Kirk voted for Donald Trump in 2016 in the hope he would run the country like a business. She cast her ballot for Trump again last fall as he promised to lower prices.
Then his tariffs threatened to tank the economy. Kirk tried not to check her 401(k) this month as the stock market sank. Last week, she wondered aloud to her husband if she should take the hit and withdraw funds: “If we’re going to go into a recession,” she said, “I might lose it all.”
Asked what she thought of Trump’s second term, the 60-year-old Home Depot employee began with a long pause. “Ummm …”
“Economically, he’s not the same person,” she said of Trump.
Independent voters are starting to sour on Trump and his disruptive agenda, demonstrating its political risks for the president and his party. In January, independents disapproved of Trump’s job performance by just a few percentage points, according to polling averages tracked by The Washington Post. This month, Trump was an average of 25 points underwater with the same group.
Trump has shown a remarkable ability to weather controversies and rebound from public backlash — and in interviews, most independent voters who cast a ballot for Trump last year or sat out the election said they did not regret their choice. They were often willing to give Trump time to turn things around, and they had heard so much about Trump’s flaws for years that it was hard to shift their opinion.
But the sinking job approval among independent voters suggests Trump is not immune to political consequences as he tears up global trade, slashes the federal government, and challenges the country’s system of checks and balances. Trump’s improvement with long-skeptical independent voters helped him win last fall, and their growing disapproval — if it holds — could hurt Republicans in the midterms.
Trump gets reckless as his agenda tanks and pushback intensifies
“He’s really governing with a clenched fist rather than an open hand,” said Jeff Horwitt, a Democratic pollster, “and his numbers reflect that.” The 2024 election focused on cost of living and who would bring it down, he said, and many voters are not getting what they wanted.
For years, many voters saw Trump’s handling of the economy as a strength, even as they disapproved of his personality or approach to other issues. Now that confidence is waning. An April Pew survey found that 45 percent of Americans believed Trump would make good decisions about the economy, down from 59 percent last fall.
“Any time that prices go up and economic growth slows, it looks like the opposite of what Americans voted for in November,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres said.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers pointed to polling that shows independent voters expressing even less confidence in Democratic congressional leaders — and focused on immigration, rather than the economy. She said in a statement that Trump is “putting America first by carrying out his mass deportation promise,” touted independents’ increased support for the president in November and said “that support will continue as long as the Democrats cling to radical policies.”
Kirk, the Home Depot employee, said she would still vote for Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris, whom she considered insincere. The Maryland resident voted for Barack Obama before Trump and used to mostly back Democrats but came to believe the party had veered too far left.
She liked Trump’s stated goal of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States, and she expected him to impose some tariffs. But not like this.
“How long is this going to take?” she asked. Her daughter’s family already needed her help to afford food, she said.
Then there were the people Trump surrounded himself with: She didn’t think Pete Hegseth had the experience to serve as defense secretary and had followed the weeks of drama over his group chats. Asked about Vice President JD Vance — Trump’s heir-apparent for 2028 — Kirk gave an uncomfortable laugh.
She didn’t like the way Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.
“To me, he was a little bit crazy,” she said.
‘Crazy people crazy’
Trump has struggled with independents before and has often catered to his loyal base over swing voters. Early in 2017, CNN polling found him underwater with the group by historic margins for that point in a presidency — a record low that he has now surpassed.
But Trump appeared to make inroads with independent voters last election. He lost the group more narrowly than he did to Joe Biden in 2020, according to exit polls, while tapping into Americans’ angst over inflation and immigration.
Ranger Kling, 19, cast his ballot for Trump despite identifying at the time as a Democrat, convinced that Harris leaned too far left and that the economy was better under Trump. The now-independent voter has some disagreements with Trump: He supports transgender rights and thinks Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is a “waste of time.” But he hasn’t yet soured on Trump’s handling of the economy, underscoring the long runway that many voters are willing to afford the president.
“He’s definitely a very straightforward person,” the college student said. “I’m going to continue to have patience and see his plan out.”
Marcus Whittley, a 51-year-old in Oklahoma, was similarly receptive to the goals behind Trump’s tariffs, calling them “absolutely worth it to get jobs back.” Joanne Kropp, a retiree in Texas, laughed nervously about the stock market but said, “I’m willing to be patient.” And Kevin Walker, a 41-year-old in Maryland, suggested that companies raising prices in response to the tariffs were being greedy about their profit margins.
He backed Trump last fall after voting for Biden in 2020 because he liked the Republican’s aggressive style and thought the U.S. had “played nice long enough.” He shared other voters’ concerns about Trump’s angry treatment of the Ukrainian president (“I think it was messed up”), as well as DOGE’s cost-cutting across the federal government (“He’s a weird guy,” he said of Musk). But none of it changed his feelings toward Trump, whom he’d always viewed as a mixed bag and someone prone to acting rashly.
“Crazy people crazy,” Walker said with a laugh.
Horwitt, the Democratic pollster, said Trump’s poor ratings with independents are only part of the story as both parties look ahead to the midterms. “If you just saw these numbers and you didn’t know where the Democrats stood, you would say … this is a slam dunk for Democrats,” he said.
But the Democratic Party has been polling at historic lows at the same time. “Democrats have real work to rebuild our brand,” he said.
